When you’re pondering the expense of an outdoor lighting system, you want to know more than just how much it costs to install. Will running all these lights make you go broke? It’s a good question, and I can easily answer it — perhaps over a cup of coffee? Because for not much more than a large cup of your favorite caramel cappuccino, you can operate your outdoor LED lights for a month.

How much does LED landscape lighting cost? To understand it better, let’s also compare it to its outdoor lighting alternatives.

Landscape Lighting Options Today

Traditional incandescent and halogen lights are still in use in landscape lighting. But they’re inefficient compared to other offerings. Most of the energy they consume is being used for heat instead of light.

A typical, moderate halogen outdoor lighting system costs about $25 a month in electricity to operate. Most homeowners consider it a small price to pay for the beauty, safety and security professional outdoor lighting offers.

All in all, incandescent lighting hasn’t changed much since Thomas Edison invented the first bulb back in 1879. To his credit, creating light in a bulb was a pretty cool thing back then. But we have higher expectations now.

Enter LED lighting.

What Makes LED Landscape Lighting Different

Edison’s incandescent invention burns and heats a piece of wire called a filament to emit light. The heat creates the light source. It’s a big power draw.

LED, on the other hand, is an electronic device that emits light when an electrical current is passed through it. One of LED outdoor lighting’s many benefits: It doesn’t create as much heat, so requires very little energy for the amount of light it produces — just a fraction of the electricity that an incandescent bulb does.

Low-voltage LED outdoor lighting uses 15-20 percent of the electricity we use with halogen or incandescent bulbs. This means far lower energy bills.

So, How Much Does LED Landscape Lighting Cost?

Opt for LED lighting, and you’ll pay about $5 a month on your electric bill. My customers with the largest, most extensive LED systems pay about $20 a month.

At my own house, I went from using 800 watts with my halogen system to 130 watts with my LED lights. That’s about the same energy consumption as leaving two incandescent lamps with 60-watt bulbs on for five hours a day.

And that’s all the output I need to do an entire landscape front to back, with LED lighting. (Surprised? Most people are.)

LED’s Bang For The Buck

Beyond the savings in energy costs, our well-designed LED landscape lighting systems deliver more light more efficiently to a targeted location than incandescent and halogen bulbs ever did.

So you get a lot of beautiful light for your buck.

How much does LED landscape lighting cost? It varies, of course, but thanks to a longer lasting product, dramatically reduced energy consumption and low-cost maintenance, using low-voltage LED lighting in a Landscape Lighting Pro of Utah design might actually save you money in the end.  

And that means more caramel cappuccinos for you.

To learn more about outdoor LED lighting in your landscape, call (801) 440-7647 to schedule a free consultation, or fill out our simple contact form.

Located in Sandy, Landscape Lighting Pro of Utah serves customers throughout Utah’s residential areas, including Salt Lake City, Park City, Draper and Holladay. Our outdoor lighting portfolio includes projects from Salt Lake County and Utah County, to Davis County and Summit County — and beyond.